Arts & Entertainment
Prejudiced
1950s book
leaves behind
filthy residue
By Bryan Peterson
Staff Reporter
“Whether Communists or Zion
ists, they still retain their Jewish
ness, and they stand united against
all non-Jews. And although they
travel different paths, both Com
munism and Zionism have the same
common goal — domination of the
world. Both work and plan for the
day when the ‘chosen race’ shall
‘inherit the earth.’”
—Frank L. Britton
So ends “Behind Communism,” a
masterpiece of 1950s-era propaganda.
Its purpose is to describe purported
historic links between Judaism and
Communism, and to reveal the inher
ent dangers of both.
Found in a box full of dusty old
books, this book is a marvel: leering <
headlines, bright-red cover art, Stalin
on the front and a “brutal old Jewess”
(Anna Poukcr, “red dictator of Rouma- 4
nia”) on the back, sandwiched be- ]
tween emblems of the Star of David
and the hammer and sickle.
“Behind Communism” presents
itself as a historically sound docu
mentation of a decades-old union
between Judaism and Communism.
Establishing such a link is not, in
itself, an immediately condcmnablc
act, for there arc people who arc both
Jewish and Communist, just as there
arc those of every other imaginable
combination of faith and politics.
Yet Britton is not merely describ
ing the association of two social forces;
he proceeds to make vast generaliza
tions and to incite hatred of whole
groups of people based upon claims
and allegations, often relying upon
guilt by association.
For all his efforts, Britton fails as a
scholar. Full of news clippings and
photographs, “Behind Communism”
centers on the turmoil in Russia dur
ing and after the 1917 Revolution,
that leaps to 1950s America and builds
upon familiar stereotypes while la
menting that any work that points out
these “facts” about Jewish people is
called anti-Semitic and ignored by
the press.
Britton’s documentation is poor
throughout. Consider this line: “Anna
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Julia Mikolajcik/DN
Molding the mind
Paula Wlnoker, an artist from Beaver College in Glendale, Penn., demonstrates slab building to a beginning ceramics class
Monday at the Nelle Cochrane Woods Art Building. Winoker, who works mostly with sjabs and is known for her fireplace
mantles and ledges, will speak and show slides at 7 p.m. today at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.
‘Ruby’ deviates from trying to explain;
injects fantasy into JFK murder tale
“Ruby”
By Mark Baldridge
Senior Reporter
With the 30th anniversary of the
assassination of John F. Kennedy
coming up in 1993 and the recent
release of Hollywood’s version of the
story with “JFK,” interest again has
risen in this strangest of crimes in the
form of “Ruby.”
A lot of Kennedy factoids seem to
be floating around these days — things
everyone “knows,” but no one can
say how.
It becomes harder and harder to
separate the myth from the reality.
And only a healthy dose of original
footage can cure some of the kooks
who warn to have Kennedy hanging
out with Elvis and Hitler in their
super-secret Greenwich Village apart
ment.
With everyone cashing in on the
fad of “explaining” the murder, it’s
nice to find a movie that doesn’t even
try.
John Mackenzie, director of
“Ruby,” uses history as a springboard
and then takes a leap into pure neu
rotic-paranoid fantasy.
Mackenzie has taken a momen
tous event in American history and
focused on one of its most enigmatic
characters, Jack Ruby, the murderer
of Lee Harvey Oswald.
In Mackenzie’s universe, Ruby,
played skillfully by Danny Aiello (“Do
the Right Thing”), is a highly intelli
gent Dallas businessman, owner of a
burlesque bar, and connected in some
obscure way with Cosanostra.
Everyone wants to use him, make
him a patsy, but he’s loo clever to fall
into their carefully laid plans. He
chooses his own way, never making it
out of the small-time.
And he has a heart of gold, taking
in and caring for the delicious Candy
Cane (Shcrilyn Fcnn of‘Twin Peaks”)
who quickly becomes the star attrac
lion of his striptease show.
This is a gangster film on drugs. It
has some of the sinister innuendo of a
film like “Naked Lunch” but without
the hallucinations. There are “wheels
within wheels” of motive and corrup
tion, reaching as high as the presi
dency and as far away as Cuba.
In the middle, and yet never in the
center, is Ruby and Candy and their
run-down strip joint.
Candy herself is a symbol of this
film’s willingness to play with the
facts. She’s totally fictional, or, as a
patron coming out of the movie ob
served, she’s a darned good-looking
plot device.
Other liberties have been taken
with the text of history: Cosanostra
and the CIA arc in cahoots and there
are many surprises for the die-hard
assassination trivia buff.
But that’s okay in the end. The
myth has become more important than
the event, and much much more inter
esting. Why keep pretending that we’re
looking for the truth?
Either we already know about as
much as we can about the Kennedy
assassination or we never will. Any
new speculation can only cloud the
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Humorous band
plays Pershing
From Staff Reports
The Make Believe Brass will
bring a touch of fantasy laced with
music and comedy to its 7:30 per
formance this evening at Pershing
Auditorium.
The group has roved around the
country for its performances.
The group’s agent, Donald E.
Osborne, described the group as “a
show band doing light classics, jazz,
pop and big band with a humorous
schtick.”
The Make Bclivc Brass has honed
its skills and is popular at
Disneyland.
“They’ve been a resident per
forming group at Disneyland for
about seven years now,” Osborne
said. “They perform there regu
larly, except when they’re on tour.”
The Make Believe Brass is a
part of the Lincoln Community
Concerts Association Scries. Tick
ets arc $10 and SI5 for adults and
$5 and $7.50 for students.
Gulf conflict inspires Nebraskan to write
Rosemary Mueller
By Ingrid Youngquist
Staff Reporter
When the United States took mili
tary action against Iraq last year, many
Americans were rocked by the fear of
war and all its implications.
For one Nebraska woman, the
anguish of seeing her country go to
war provided inspiration to write.
Rosemary Mueller of Fremont said
she never had cause to write before.
In fact, Mueller said she was only
able to write at a third-grade level and
read at a sixth-grade level when she
began to jot down her First reflections
on the Persian Gulf Crisis.
A year later and much to her sur
prise, she had her poems published in
a book titled “Feelings of War 1991.”
“I had no intentions of writing a
book,” she said. “What I was basi
cally doing was thinking of different
feelings and putting them down on
paper.”
Mueller’s feelings about the war
were twofold.
The war, she said, brought back
memories of her childhood in Eng
land where, during World War II, she
lived in fear of bombing raids on
London.
She said the Persian Gulf war also
made her fear for her daughter Delia,
a 1989 University of Nebraska-Lin
coln graduate, who was a sergeant in
an Army drill unit based in Indiana.
Although her daughter was never
sent to the Gulf, Mueller said she
knew many people from the Fremont
area who were sent.
‘‘To 1991 — A World of Peace”
was Mueller’s first composition about
the Gulf crisis.
She said she wrote the poem after
seeing the Fremont-based 1012th
General Supply Company depart for
the Persian Gulf. This was a parlieu
larly traumatic experience, Mueller
said, because her daughter had been a
member of that company.
Other poems like “The Mountains
of Hell,” about the strife of the Kurds
who were forced to flee into the
mountains away from Saddam Hussein,
were inspired by television, she said.
Mueller said she tried to cover
every aspect of the war in her poems.
She wrote about how the war af
fected families on both sides of the
battlefield. She also wrote about the
effects of war on nature.
In “I am Saddam Hussein,” she
said she wrote about what she thought
Hussein must have thought about the
war.
Although the subject matter may
have been endless, writing the poems
was a long process for Mueller, she
said, because she had to keep looking
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